This boiler is part of the plant's production system.  Since boilers and furnaces emit air exhausts, they will be regulated as emissions sources under the Clean Air Act.  The Vent & Flare (Stack Emissions) Tour Stop has more details on the general structure of the Clean Air Act.  

In addition, a notable feature of boilers and industrial furnaces is that they can be used to control emissions from other unit operations and/or they can be used to burn fuel containing hazardous waste (e.g., certain types of used oil).  In either of these cases the boiler or furnace will be subject to additional regulation.   

Most of our tour is focused on pollution control.  However, through construction or other land-based activities you might need to address natural resource issues as well.  For example, your facility might want to expand into a wetlands area.  Or it might (as pictured here) decide to do some dredging and filling work near a river.

Any time you start to make changes to your general environment, you should consider the possibility of natural resource regulation.  Key issues include:

Remember than any construction activity will be covered by the standard pollution control regulations.  For example, you will have to manage stormwater runoff and fugitive emissions from construction activities during the construction process.  Among other air pollutants, construction sites often generate significant dust, which is an ambient air quality pollutant under the National Ambient Air Quality Standards (NAAQS) and thus must be managed.

Cooling towers can be a significant source of wastewater at a chemical plant.  

The main law governing wastewater discharge is the Clean Water Act (CWA).   The Clean Water Act covers  discharges of wastewaters from a facility, including discharges either piped to a sewer authority or released directly to a waterway via an "outfall."   The Wastewater Treatment Tour Stop a little later on this tour provides more details on CWA permitting provisions.  This stop on the tour will first focus on the importance of evaluating your wastewater volumes.

These workers are cleaning an open process tank.  As they do so, they may well be generating hazardous waste.

RCRA, the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act, provides special requirements that cover the generation, storage, handling, and management of hazardous wastes. RCRA regulations are quite detailed and stringent, so it is important to fully understand your responsibilities here.  RCRA is a federal law, but may be implemented by your state environmental agency.

What is hazardous waste? First, it is waste – i.e. some "discarded material". Second, it is waste that is not covered by the Clean Air Act or Clean Water Act; that is, not air or water emissions. Third, it is waste that either 1) exhibits certain specific hazardous characteristics (e.g., is corrosive), or 2) is listed as a hazardous waste by EPA.

Under RCRA, facilities must determine if they generate hazardous waste, through waste testing or other means. If so, the facility must obtain an EPA identification number, and follow a series of specific recordkeeping, handling, and management requirements. These include:

This is the shed where hazardous waste is stored.

RCRA provides specific requirements on how to properly handle, label, and store hazardous waste.  RCRA also imposes a time limit on how long you can store hazardous waste.  In fact, you will need a TSD permit if you plan to store your hazardous waste beyond the established storage time limits (90 days for most generators).

Note that there are some tricky rules regarding whether recycling or reclamation of hazardous waste is considered "treatment" requiring a TSD permit.  It is therefore very important to be sure any time you are processing secondary materials that you are not unknowingly engaging in TSD activities without a permit.

The main law governing air emissions is the Clean Air Act (CAA).   The next tour stop covering Vents & Flares (Stack Emissions) provides a general introduction to the main provisions of the CAA.  This stop on the tour will use a heat exchanger to illustrate how to methodically characterize a piece of equipment or unit in order to identify potential air emissions sources.

· Regular Processes:
 
-- startup
-- operation
-- venting
-- blowdown activities
-- equipment cleanout
-- maintenance
-- shutdown

· Potential events:
 
-- leaks
-- failures/malfunctions

If you generate hazardous waste, there are two major options for treating it: send it off-site for treatment or treat it on-site (as is pictured with this incinerator.)

If you send your hazardous waste off-site for treatment, you will still need to follow the requirements of being a hazardous waste generator, including getting an EPA ID, properly handling your waste (through labeling and segregation), and meeting storage time limits. You will need to identify a suitable Treatment, Storage, and Disposal (TSD) facility that can manage your waste and arrange for the waste – accompanied by its waste manifest – to be sent off-site.

Hazardous Waste Treatment:

If you treat your hazardous waste on-site (i.e., using incineration or other technologies), you will have to get a special, stringent TSD permit. This permit will establish a whole host of detailed operating requirements for your treatment process, including technical specifications; monitoring, recordkeeping, and reporting; and so forth. The permitting process can stretch over years, and is considered very rigorous.

If you generate hazardous waste, there are two major options for treating it: send it off-site for treatment or treat it on-site (as is pictured with this injection well.)

If you send your hazardous waste off-site for treatment, you will still need to follow the requirements of being a hazardous waste generator, including getting an EPA ID, properly handling your waste (through labeling and segregation), and meeting storage time limits. You will need to identify a suitable Treatment, Storage, and Disposal (TSD) facility that can manage your waste and arrange for the waste – accompanied by its waste manifest – to be sent off-site.

In the chemical industry, one common form of on-site waste treatment (for both hazardous and non-hazardous waste) is underground injection. Underground injection is regulated via the Underground Injection Control (UIC) Program under the Safe Drinking Water Act (SDWA). The UIC program is often managed by state agencies and is designed to insure wastes pumped into the ground do not contaminate the groundwater.  You will need a permit for any underground injection, which will specify conditions for what you can inject and how.  (This permit will take the place of a RCRA TSD permit if you are injecting hazardous waste.)

Although the bulk of your waste and emissions sources will arise from your general process operations lines, you shouldn't neglect the waste coming from support operations such as laboratory work or general maintenance activities.  These wastes might still represent significant management and disposal headaches for you, as well as opportunities for waste minimization.  Here are some issues to consider:

* Analytical laboratories:  Analytical laboratories can generate small quantities of a wide range of wastes.  In addition, laboratories can often contain old stockpiles of poorly labeled or outdated chemicals.  These materials cannot be simply thrown into the trash or poured down in drain.  Instead, in general you will need to manage these materials as hazardous waste under RCRA.

This landfill receives solid, non-hazardous waste from facility activities.  Although not as heavily regulated as hazardous waste, solid waste must still be managed according to regulation.  Here are some issues to consider:

* Empty containers:  In general, empty containers of hazardous materials or hazardous waste are considered non-hazardous, and can be disposed of as solid waste.   However, in practice, you might find it difficult to manage the number and variety of containers that are generated.  You may need to consult EPA or state authorities for more information.

* General solid waste:  Solid (non-hazardous) waste is defined by RCRA as "discarded material."  Although RCRA provides some guidance on non-hazardous solid waste management, in most cases your requirements for waste disposal will be set by your regional solid waste landfill.  For example, the landfill might restrict the types of waste they will accept or set other types of controls on waste disposal.

Transfer points where materials are loaded or unloaded are a common site for fugitive air emissions and/or ground spills, both of which have environmental regulatory consequences. 

Managing accidental release of chemical substances and hazardous materials – as a result of accidental spills, chronic leaks, or other causes – is a major focus of environmental regulation.  Essentially all the environmental laws contain some sort of accidental release provisions that apply to various lists of hazardous substances.  These requirements go hand in hand with emergency planning requirements.

Given that you have a release, there are two key actions you will need to take: 1) initiating emergency response, including reporting the release, and 2) cleaning it up.  Below we will cover emergency response and reporting.

Your emergency response plan should include procedures both for managing the substantive hazards of a release and for initiating notification to appropriate authorities.  Among other things, you will need to determine what substances were released and in what quantities.  If releases are above reportable quantities, you will need to notify the following:

Other agencies might also need notification during accidental releases. Considerations include:

Note that it is better to be comprehensive in reporting releases -- that is, you're better off reporting to all potentially relevant agencies and letting them determine applicability.

The U.S. Department of Transportation regulates all hazardous materials transport under the HMTA or Hazardous Materials Transportation Act.  The HMTA covers transport of any hazardous materials, whether chemical feedstocks, products, wastes, or even hazardous waste.  HMTA requires facilities to follow certain packaging, labeling, loading, routing, and emergency planning requirements. In addition, spills during transportation are covered by the reporting and cleanup requirements of the  HMTA.   If you are transporting RCRA hazardous waste, you will need to meet additional RCRA requirements for proper labeling and manifesting of the waste.

Here's the plant office where you do much of your environmental compliance planning.

How do you survey and analyze your operations to check for regulatory coverage?  In addition to trying the other resources provided in this web site (e.g., the self-assessment tools provided)  we'd like to suggest you go through the following exercise:

1) Map your product preparation systems.  Include the inputs, processes, and outputs.  Include both planned and unplanned operations (possible upsets).  Consider how each input, process, and output might affect the environment.  Be comprehensive when detailing any air emissions, water emissions, and waste items that result.

2)  Describe your general facility operations by listing the various major types of equipment and activities that occur at the plant. Go beyond the product preparation lines to include: storage activities, facility energy generation, facility and equipment maintenance, and other support services.  For example, how does the plant get energy?  Water?  How and where are chemical inputs stored?  Consider how each of these activities might have environmental impacts, both ongoing and accidental.

3)  Describe any facility construction or other land-based activities.  Where are construction or land-based activities occurring and how are they changing the site?  Consider how each of these activities might affect the environment.

4)  Become familiar with the general environment of your site.  Learn something about the hydrology (how the water flows), wind patterns, and surrounding land-use.  Do a walk-around of the site, looking for any signs of current or previous practices that might be affecting the environment.

Pumps, valves, and piping often can be sources of small air leaks (as can other pieces of equipment, such as tanks, reactors, etc.).

The Clean Air Act covers not only air emissions from stacks, but also any "fugitive" emissions that may escape from piping, valves, tanks or other sources. This means you need to think about all the opportunities for solvents, volatile organics, or other chemicals to evaporate from storage locations, transfer stations, and work areas. Even vapor leaks are included.

Here are some of the possible sources of fugitive emissions:

Emissions levels from these sources must be included in the site-level air emissions inventory that will go into setting your site-wide permit limitations.  In addition, in some cases there are specific regulations that cover possible sources of fugitive emissions.  For example, there are specific New Source Performance Standards  to manage equipment leaks of VOCs and of benzene from containers or piping that hold those chemicals (Part 60 and 61 of the regulations).  There are also hazardous air standards that would also apply to any source of the pollutant - whether a stack or a fugitive source (National Emissions Standards for Hazardous Air Pollutants or NESHAPS, at Parts 61 and 63).

Pipes, valves and pumps can also be a source of liquid leaks.  In turn these liquid leaks can both generate air emissions (as the leak evaporates), and can cause hazardous waste or wastewater generation (as the leak is cleaned up or managed).   In addition, depending on the type and amount of leak, accidental release provisions under the Emergency Planning and Community Right to Know Act (EPCRA) may be triggered.  More details on these requirements is provided at the tour stop on Truck and Train Loading.

This chemical reactor is formulating a new chemical product.  There are certain environmental regulations that involve assessing or reviewing chemical products. These regulations may directly affect the kinds of chemicals you manufacture and import, or how they are formulated. 

Two key laws that govern the manufacture or importing of  new chemicals are: TSCA (for general chemicals) and FIFRA (for pesticides).  TSCA stands for the Toxic Substances Control Act, while FIFRA stands for the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act. Both of these laws focus on  screening chemicals for environmental and health effects before they are manufactured or used.

Under TSCA, EPA can require companies to provide health and other data in a "premanufacture notice" prior to manufacturing or importing a chemical.  EPA can restrict or even ban the substance based on risks to humans or the environment. TSCA also has special provisions for the management of PCBs, asbestos, and CFCs.

FIFRA complements TSCA by covering pesticides.  FIFRA focuses on registration and classification of pesticides, as well as application and use requirements.

Another requirement that affects the manufacture or importing of chemicals is the Clean Air Act's consumer products rule (known as the "Section 183(e) rule").  This rule is aimed at limiting the emissions of  volatile organic compounds (VOCs) from several different types of consumer products, including various home beauty products, household cleaners, adhesives, and insecticides.  In the aggregate, these VOC emissions contribute to the formation of ozone, which at ground level is a health hazard, even though in the stratosphere it is a valuable shield against the sun's uv rays.  Manufacturers, importers, and/or distributors must insure their products are in compliance with the VOC limitations.

Process tanks themselves are likely to be subject to direct emissions limits under the Clean Air Act.  For example, certain types of process tanks (e.g., distillation tanks, reactor tanks) are automatically covered by Clean Air Act  New Source Performance Standards (Part 60 of the regulations).  In addition, process tanks and process lines may be sources of both controlled vents and fugitive emissions, and would be covered by one of several hazardous air standards that apply to reactors and equipment (National Emissions Standards for Hazardous Air Pollutants or NESHAPS, at Parts 61 and 63).

You may have an area on your site with hazardous materials contamination.  Perhaps this contamination stems from previous activities or even from a prior owner.  Perhaps this contamination arises from some current operation (such as spills during product transfer activities).  Depending on the type and extent of contamination, the site may become a candidate for remediation.  (Your first order of business in this case will be to notify EPA and other authorities)

You may also become involved in remediation occurring at another site; for example, at a hazardous waste treatment site you have used in the past.  Regardless of how much waste you contributed to a site, you can still be held liable for cleanup costs if a release occurs.

CERCLA – known as "Superfund" – is the major federal law governing cleanup of abandoned, contaminated sites.  If a site is selected for Superfund cleanup, there will be a risk assessment and feasibility study to determine how cleanup should be conducted, and finally a cleanup alternative will be selected. Many states have additional – and sometimes more stringent –  state-level Superfund requirements.

While Superfund covers cleanup of many types of releases from past practices, any release of contamination from operating TSD facilities, underground storage tanks, or underground injection wells will be covered by "corrective action" plans.  These plans will specify the kinds of remediation to be performed, and other technical and administrative requirements. In general, corrective action plans are similar to  CERCLA cleanup plans, but are applied to operating facilities.

Distillation and separation equipment can create a wide range of air emissions.  On this stop of the tour we will illustrate how a unit operation will be affected by ongoing changes to the Clean Air Act.

The CAA is a complex law with thousands of pages of regulation.  It is also highly technical, with alot of technical specifications and details – as well as legal specifications and details.  In addition, the regulations are not static.  In fact, there is a 10-year push to issue source-based air toxics regulations. After amendments passed to the clean Air act in 1990, EPA has a schedule for identifying sources of the 188 Toxic air pollutants, and issuing technology-based emissions standards (MACT) for each source category.   So EPA has been releasing a series of these NESHAPS and MACT standards over the past several years, including the MON or Miscellaneous Organic NESHAPS.

For chemical facilities, this means continuing effort to evaluate and comply with these new standards, while keeping up with the old standards.  Thus facilities can be affected by multiple source standards –even a given source or unit process can be affected by multiple standards.   These include not only NESHAPS standards for air toxics but also new source performance standards (NSPS) for various pollutants (though there is less ongoing regulatory development here currently).

For example, for a distillation unit in the synthetic organic chemical sector, the following source-specific standards may all be applicable at the same time:

Each of these rules might have specific MACT control requirements as well as other requirements.  Integrating these various requirements is a major challenge of Clean Air Act compliance.

Your facility may have underground storage tanks (USTs) storing either petroleum or certain hazardous substances that are subject to federal and state environmental regulations.  An UST is a tank and any underground piping connected to the tank that has at least 10 percent of its combined volume underground.

USTs are regulated as part of the UST Program under RCRA, the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act. This program is administered in large part by state and local agencies.

Federal UST requirements apply to USTs storing petroleum or certain hazardous substances defined by the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act (CERCLA).  However, federal UST requirements do not apply to USTs storing hazardous wastes, which are instead regulated under the hazardous waste requirements of RCRA.

Storage tanks need to be considered part of the chemical inventory and included in your emergency planning and notification process.  Storage tanks are covered by a series of spill prevention and management requirements, including the Spill Prevention Control & Counter Measures Plan (SPCC) required for certain hazardous materials under the Clean Water Act and the Risk Management Plan (RMP) required for certain air toxics under the Clean Air Act.

The town or community surrounding your plant will have a key role to play in the environmental performance of your facility.   While community groups have no direct regulatory authority, citizens do have the right under several laws to sue if a facility isn’t following the regulations. Community groups also have general influence on how your business is regulated.

An important law that involves the surrounding community is the Emergency Planning and Community Right-to-Know Act (EPCRA), passed in 1986.  EPCRA is intended to improve local community access to information about chemical hazards and to improve state and local emergency response capabilities.  EPCRA has three main objectives:

One of the major environmental laws affecting chemical facilities is the Clean Air Act (CAA).  The Act applies to air emissions not only from process vents, but also from boilers, steam vents, and flares.  It also covers "fugitive" emissions from piping, storage and transfer activities, and even construction and remediation.  You also need to check for coverage under state or regional air regulations, since states and regional authorities have important responsibilities under the Clean Air Act, and can impose additional requirements.

The CAA regulates emissions that affect general air quality (such as sulfur dioxide or particulates), as well as hazardous or toxic chemical emissions (benzene, MEK, and other VOCs, etc.)  The CAA can be enforced by EPA, or by state or regional air agencies that have been delegated authority by EPA.

Three major components of the Clean Air Act that will affect chemical facility process operations are:

In addition to air emissions, vents, flares or other stacks are potential sources of hazardous waste and wastewater (e.g., in the case of any wet scrubbing).
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If you have sufficient quantities of chemicals on site – even if they are just sitting in your warehouse and storage tanks – you will be subject to a series of interwoven requirements related to emergency planning and community right to know. Indeed, this may be one of your biggest responsibilities in regulatory compliance.

There are two general parts to these emergency planning requirements:

To meet these requirements, you will need to provide your storage tanks with such features as containment, corrosion protection, labeling, venting, and other preventive management measures.  You will also need to protect against spills and leaks during transfer and loading operations.

Several laws require emergency planning and community right to know for various lists of chemicals:

Wastewater generated at a chemical plant will likely be treated on-site and then discharged either to a sewer authority or directly to a waterway.

Sewer discharge:

Chemical plant wastewaters that are delivered to a sewer authority or Publicly Owned Treatment Works (POTW) are covered by the Clean Water Act's   "pretreatment" regulations. There are two types of pretreatment requirements: 1) categorical standards developed by the EPA that apply to each industry, and 2) local standards developed by each POTW. Under the pretreatment program, you will have to register with the EPA and your POTW, and meet certain permit limits as well as performing  monitoring and reporting.

Note that all wastewater discharges to a POTW need to be considered here, including not only process line discharges, but also discharges from other activities, such as throwing chemicals or cleaning materials down the drain during laboratory work or maintenance activities.

Direct discharge:

Whenever there is wastewater discharging from a pipe or other "point" source into a waterway (river, lake, even intermittent stream), you will be subject to the Clean Water Act’s National Pollution Discharge Elimination System (NPDES) permit program.  Common NPDES wastewater sources include process operations and cooling towers.

Your NPDES permit will limit the types and amounts of pollutants that can be directly released into waterways.  Under NPDES, you need to register with appropriate authorities, procure a permit, and do regular monitoring and reporting of your wastewater discharges. The NPDES permit is issued either by EPA or by your state agency, depending on whether the state has gained authority for the program from EPA.

Storm water:

It has been widely recognized that stormwater runoff from industrial sites can often contain high levels of harmful contaminants - including both process chemicals and materials from vehicles, hard machinery, and other sources. To protect waterways, facilities must now get a National Pollution Discharge Elimination System (NPDES) permit for their stormwater drains.

This NPDES permit works much like the permit you would get for other wastewater discharges.  Again, the permit will be issued either by EPA or your state agency depending on whether the state has gained authority for the program from EPA.